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Tropicalia

Tropicalia ou Panis Et Circensis was the manifesto to the Tropicalia movement that Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil started along with Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, Tom Ze and others in the late 60’s. In addition to being incredibly outspoken against the military dictatorship that silenced any form of expression and stripped people of their freedoms, they also set out to revolutionize form in addition to content. In all artforms involved in this movement (Theater, Cinema Novo, Poetry, Visual Arts, Music, etc…) they welcomed outside influences influences and embrassed them. Brazilian music at the time was overly-nationalist and frowned upon any outside influence. Artists like Caetano, Gil, and Os Mutantes rejected this idealogy and borrowed heavily from artists like The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, etc… Rogerio Duprat, the arranger of most of the albums during this time including this one, lived in France to study directly from Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez just as Quincy Jones did. It was through all these influences a new sound was created. This movement was shortlived though, due to the government jailing and eventually exiling Caetano and Gil on December 27th, 1968. The 2 lived in London until they were allowed back in 1972. Caetano wrote this about the effects of the movement in his book‘Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil’…

“We had not attained socialism, had not even found its human face; neither had we entered the Age of Aquarius or the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost; we had not overcome the West, had not rooted out racism or abolished sexual hypocrisy. But things would never be as they had been.”

After Tropicalia there was complete acceptance to inovation in the arts in Brazil. People were granted more freedom of expression, and artists were no longer censored. The political system even got better. There is a great documentary that is available online that you should definately check out called ‘Brazil, The Tropicalist Revolution’.

Soul Jazz put out an incredible comp last year called ‘Tropicalia A Brazilian Revolution in Sound’. To keep the forum going and with an attempt to get more people involved, only registered users in the forum will recieve the link to this unbelievable record. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, go now…

True, it was a movement (or a counter-movement, or a kind of “all the movements at the same time, now!” as said one of the most emblematic phrases of that epoch), that bring modernity to Brasil’s music. Brasil at that time was living, as the rest of the world, a very turbulent period, specially in politics and in cultureI. We were at a crossroad, vizualizing the inevitable future, with mass media and all that consequences, but fighting to mantain our roots and folklore alive. As a consequence of that, there was the protest thing. Music becomes THE way of protest agains the dicatatorship that rule the country at that time. What you sing it was what you believe! Then, came that crazy baianos and said: “stop making sense!” and unleash a chaotic art, music, lyrics, clothes, aestethics, happenings, guitars… man, they blew the country’s consciosness away. It really is difficult to put in perspective all the good things theses cats done for the brazilian culture, as even Caetano admits on the Verdade Tropical book. But aside all that “cultural” thing, lies the music. And there was such a fantastic music, Even the music it was not called tropicalia, you can feel the tropicalia influences. Apart from those tropicalia icons, Gil Caetano, Mutantes, Nara leão, Gal Gosta, Tom Zé, artists like Jorge Ben (well, this particular artist was a tropicalia icon before there was tropicalia, hehe), Marcos Valle, Tim Maia, Erasmo Carlos, everyone released great records with the aesthetics of freedom of Tropicalia… and even today, with the emergence o manguebit, from Recife, we can feel those echoes of 68… what a great legacy! sorry for the extended comment.